Proposing Suitable Climate Justice Models for Resolving the Farmers-Herders Conflict in Nigeria

One of the most intractable security challenges facing the Nigerian state is the perennial farmers-herders conflict leading to dire humanitarian crises. The main cause of the conflict is the competition for scarce land and water resources between the nomadic livestock herders and sedentary farmers. Free range grazing on cultivated farmlands often leads to violent clashes between these two important sets of players in the Nigerian agricultural sector. The violence assumes diverse forms including murders, abductions, sexual violence, land grab, cattle rustling, banditry, wanton destruction of farmlands and general outlawry on an industrial scale. These clashes leave death, displacement, and impoverishment of thousands of people in their wake. Although the Nigerian government has majorly approached the conflict as a security issue, many factors have been identified as contributors to the conflict including ethnic and sectarian rivalries, elite influence, population growth, urbanization, neglect of traditional dispute resolution mechanisms and climate change. Most victims of the clashes are rural dwellers who are least responsible for the environmental factors that created the conflict. The authorities and victims seldom factor in climate change in the management of the crises, but studies have linked climate change-induced environmental degradation to the conflicts as a causal agent or threat multiplier. This paper conducts a review of the available data linking climate change to the interminable conflict between farmers and herders. The paper surveys the legal regime of Nigeria’s climate change management system and proposes appropriate distributive, transformative and restorative justice models for resolving the conflict.